So recently I had a biofeedback evaluation that involved, among other things this sensor that monitored my breathing. And *surprise* it was terrible (my breathing, not the test which actually wasn’t that bad)
Basically through two separate hour long sessions I was hyperventilating pretty badly. Of course I had no idea I was doing so because I wasn’t taking dramatic deep breaths, but rather a ton of substandard shallow ones. The problem with doing that is that your carbon dioxide gets way too low, which causes ineffective delivery of oxygen in your blood, dizziness, pins and needles, and general confusion/disorientation from effective oxygen deprivation (even when you have good saturation). This might explain why my episodes of disorientation get so much worse if I am stressed or upset as my breathing gets even worse than my terrible baseline. The other problem is that your body relies on carbon dioxide not oxygen levels to regulate breathing, so eventually you just stop breathing and switch to voluntary breathing which happens to me all the time. To make matters worth shallow breathing reenforces bad posture and pain in the muscles in your neck, which I already have quite enough of, thank you!
So yeah. I’m not sure if my brainstem is slightly compromised from all the instability and general badness, and since that is supposed to regulate breathing maybe that’s part of my problem? Or maybe it’s because my body is just under so much stress all the time, even when I feel fairly relaxed. Maybe its just autonomic dysfunction? Or maybe I learned these breathing techniques when I was living in a state of extreme anxiety and stress 24/7 (thanks mental illness!) and never relearned them after I recovered. No matter what I think this might explain a lot of my symptoms, which would be great if I can improve it. The easiest thing to do if you are hyperventilating is breathe with a longer exhale than inhale. Called 7-11 breathing because thats a good ratio to start with, but you can even go to 4-12 and beyond (we used to do crazy ratios in choir to practice breath control). You can also breathe through one nostril or pursed lips
Not sure if insurance will work out to see the biofeedback person for treatment, but at the very least now I have another thing to try when I’m feeling disoriented besides making sure I’m sitting with my legs up in a POTS friendly position. It’s funny how there is rarely a silver bullet - instead you just slowly accumulate tools that each help a bit in certain situations, and when you’re really sick it takes a ton of little break throughs to really make progress.
